Q. Describe one way how a skill you learned in a previous job helped you in your new job. Working as a journalist at The Hill, POLITICO and The Washington Times qualified me for a full-tuition journalism scholarship to earn a master's in public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. I was at the K School during the financial crisis and chose to study business policy to understand more about the underpinnings of the crisis. Those studies generated an interest in finance, which led to Wall Street jobs at Moody's Investors Service and Goldman Sachs.

After working several years in finance, I returned to my love of public policy and media. Through founding Bold, I combined my experience in both business and journalism. As an entrepreneur, I leverage both Left and Right-brained skills honed in these various work environments. Each experience built on the prior, even if the route wasn't linear or direct.

Q. How are you (or your company, org, nonprofit) currently bridging the gap between politics and tech? As an adviser to Lincoln Network, I am working with an amazing Silicon Valley-based team to help tell the story of Lincoln's work to modernize the center-right movement by implementing best tech practices. Through Lincoln's new initiative, Lincoln Deployed, Lincoln is building a network of passionate tech experts, from product to Web coding & design and everything in between, who want to make a difference in the civic space. These tech experts are working as consultants to liberty-minded organizations, helping them coach executives on how to build teams, set up workflows, create analytics dashboards.

As the founder of Bold, we are integrating the best broadcasting practices for socially-native television. Our Bold political talk show, which I co-anchor with Clay Aiken (we call ourselves "Morning Joe For Millennials), is using this TV tech to directly engage with our audience to discuss politics and news of the day.

Q. Most underrated virtue in an employee? Stoicism. That word gets a bad rap, but its true, ancient root is grounded in the historical teaching that adversities are not to be avoided, they are to be embraced as training for bigger and better things. This is super helpful in startup world.

Q. Best advice you’ve received? Hard to say just one piece of advice, but something I learned from my father was to not care what anyone thought while fearlessly pursuing your life's purpose. If you derive your sense of worth from other people or external events, you will be constantly disappointed. My dad taught me the inherent self-worth of every person, no matter their walk of life. This understanding has helped me while building Bold, which as a startup entails lots of setbacks and disappointments--but also lots of exciting successes. Keeping an even keel in circumstances of success or failure is something I learned from this knowledge of self-worth.

Q. Favorite under the radar company? Silicon Harlem is an amazing company that expands technology opportunities in Harlem. They serve as an incubator and accelerator for startups and other tech initiatives in this historic epicenter of African-American and Latino culture. Their work to revive this iconic urban neighborhood is a model for communities around the country and the globe.

Q. Startup to watch? KweliTV, founder DeShuna Spencer is a dynamo looking to grow positive media representation of African diaspora. This is a a very important mission as our culture too often focuses on negative stereotypes, both externally and internally created about African-Americans.